If you think your emails are private, think again

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If you think your emails are private, think again

October 19th, 2015

Awake Goy

When you type up a racy e-mail to a loved one, do you consider the details private?

Most of us would probably say yes, even though such messages often end up filtered through intelligence agencies and service providers.

On the other hand, as the digital world becomes more personalized, consumers have begun to accept, appreciate and apparently requestrelevant connections between their online behavior and displayed advertisements.

It’s fairly commonplace now. Type camping gear into your browser, and for the next few weeks you’ll see online ads for shoes, stoves, shirts and even fashion accessories, all specially designed for camping.

But when you send an e-mail to a family member, or when you receive an e-mail from a friend, do you expect the same type of follow-on advertising as you do from internet searches?

Or do you expect some different level of privacy simply because the information is cloaked in an e-mail?

That’s the issue at stake in a pending lawsuit against Yahoo! Inc.

The case against Yahoo
Plaintiffs filed an e-mail privacy lawsuit against Yahoo in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under several privacy laws, including the Stored Communications Act (SCA) — a federal law that prohibits an e-mail service provider from knowingly divulging to any person or entity the contents of a communication while in electronic storage.

Under the SCA, an e-mail service provider may, however, properly disclose the contents of such communications with the lawful consent of the originator or an addressee or the intended recipient of such communication.

Earlier this year in May, Judge Lucy Koh granted plaintiffs’ request to proceed in the lawsuit as a nationwide class action.

Class actions allow plaintiffs with identical or similar claims to come together as a group in one lawsuit against a common defendant, rather than each plaintiff bringing his or her own individual lawsuit against the same defendant. Typically, many of the claimants would not have the resources to pursue their individual claims for oftentimes relatively modest economic damages. A class action allows them to pool their resources, hire attorneys on a contingency basis to limit or eliminate plaintiffs’ out-of-pocket expenses and seek potentially larger awards than would likely result from a series of individual lawsuits.

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